Drinking Water Security and Climate Change Adaptation in Canada: Evaluating Forest Management and Disturbance Impacts on Treatability

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The drinking water for more than 58% of the largest urban communities in Canada originates in forested watersheds. The health of Canada’s forests and the waters they supply is threatened by numerous pressures, including potentially severe threats from climate change that cause increasingly variable and deteriorated water quality. This can overwhelm treatment processes and push them beyond their design capacity, necessitating potentially cost-prohibitive changes in treatment to ensure provision of safe drinking water. The value of natural storage and filtration of water by global forests has been estimated at $4.1 trillion (US) and so, forested water resources are strategic priorities in Canada and globally. Thus, the delivery of safe drinking water—security—and its relationship to natural and anthropogenic activities in forested watersheds is a critical priority. Forest disturbances (e.g. wildfires, hurricanes) can be potentially catastrophic for drinking water supply and treatment; as a result, there is an increased interest in forest management for source water protection (SWP). While forests are managed for many purposes, they are not currently managed for protection of drinking water supplies. While the impacts of forest disturbance and management on water have been well studied, little if any of that research has specifically focused on impacts to drinking water treatability—those impacts often are not evident from the available science. Our goal is to provide new knowledge regarding the impacts of wildfire and different forest management strategies on water quality and treatability to inform decision making regarding drinking water security and source protection. Specific objectives are: to 1) evaluate the impacts of forest fuel management approaches on the quality and treatability of water supplies, 2) identify deteriorated water quality characteristics that particularly compromise treatment after severe wildfire, and 3) evaluate emerging drinking water treatment technologies’ capacity to treat highly deteriorated water after wildfire. This research will provide new knowledge and train students with skills relevant to the needs of Canadian organizations in the strategic areas of Environmental Science and Technologies. The research outcomes can be directly applied to inform decision making in SWP, integrated resource management, and technology implementation and drinking water safety planning. Trainees will have specific skills related to integrated drinking water and forest management that are lacking in Canada and abroad. New forest management-based SWP strategies may offer climate change adaptation strategies that can mitigate catastrophic threats of wildfire to drinking water security and preclude the need for costly, potentially cost-prohibitive drinking water treatment upgrades necessitated by severe forested source watershed disturbances.